Flagstaff’s daily paper, the Arizona Daily Sun, kept up its pattern of reporting the real estate market three weeks late with yesterday’s front page story: March Home Sales Lowest Since 1999. More significantly, they missed the point. According to the Daily Sun, “the good news in the Flagstaff real estate market is the homes that are selling are keeping their value.” Actually, that’s the bad news because that is what’s keeping homes from not selling – the prices are too high. I’m not saying we have to lose 20% of market value to get the volume of sales up, but I am saying that prices need to come down from where they are and have been. So, the really good news will be when the late news is that home prices are down and volume is up. In the same way that no one knew when we had hit the top in prices, we’ll not know when we’ve hit the bottom until it starts back up. When it does, would be buyers will have “missed” the bottom. Meanwhile, would be sellers are missing sales by being inflexible about pricing – but then, I guess that means they are not really “sellers.” P.S. Sales so far in April, as of noon, today, exceed the March sales. There have been 44 Flagstaff home sales. | 
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